


The Arcade

by tsuki_llama



Series: The Office [25]
Category: Darker Than Black
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsuki_llama/pseuds/tsuki_llama
Summary: Section Four heads to the arcade to wind down.
Relationships: Hei/Kirihara Misaki
Series: The Office [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/483635
Comments: 12
Kudos: 141





	The Arcade

**Author's Note:**

> I found a thing! I think this is posted somewhere on ffnet, but never made its way here. I wrote this before I had even conceived of The Office series, so it doesn't fit into any particular place on the timeline. It just sort of...is. Enjoy!

“Are you guys almost finished? I call winner.”

Hei didn’t waver from his concentration on the game, but beside him Kouno let out a startled “Urk!” and promptly missed his aim; Ootsuka giggled in the background. The timer ran down as they fired their plastic guns at the targets on the screen, until the buzzer went off and Hei’s side flashed and blinked with excited lights. He’d beaten Kouno by quite a decent margin.

Kouno passed Misaki his gun and stepped down from the platform - but not before dropping his voice and telling Hei, “Do yourself a favor and let her win.”

The narrowing of her eyes told Hei that Misaki had heard the comment; but in any case, he knew better than to take it easy on her.

“Ready?” she asked, taking up a perfect stance and aiming the gun at the center of the screen, which now depicted a crate-cluttered warehouse.

“Sure,” Hei said, his own fake weapon held loosely at his side. He liked the plastic gun; it felt nothing like a real pistol.

Misaki nodded once, then slapped her hand down on the start button without letting her aim waver an inch.

The garish music ramped up and grainy space aliens began popping up from behind the crates and barrels or the edges of the screen. Hei swung his gun as each one appeared, pulling the trigger a moment before his sights landed on the enemy; by the time one creature fell he was already firing at the next one.

After a minute or two, he risked a glance over at Misaki. Her jaw was tight, and although her aim was good, she wasn’t felling every one.

“Pay attention to your own game!” she snapped without turning. Guiltily, Hei refocused on his screen.

The timer wound down; the lights flashed, victory music sang out, and the word _Winner!_ blinked happily - on Hei’s side of the screen. Misaki stared at it expressionlessly, arms at her side and her hand tight around the grip of her gun. Behind her Ootsuka clapped twice before she caught Saitou’s frantic glance and stopped.

“Less than a thousand points difference,” Hei said cautiously. “That’s pretty close.”

It was a lie, and they both knew it. Misaki’s cheek twitched.

“You’re aiming like it’s a real gun, but you have to account for the slow response.”

Misaki didn’t say anything; she continued to stare at the screen.

“Because, it’s a computer, and the program…” Hei trailed off. He wasn’t sure if anything he was saying was making it better, or worse. “I mean, if this was a real weapon, and real aliens - I mean, your marksmanship -”

“Look, the air hockey table’s free - any takers?” Misaki turned to the group, her eyes bright. Everyone took one step back; Saitou became suddenly very interested in his shoes, while Kouno scratched his nose and stared up at the ceiling.

Hei looked around at them all. “What’s air hockey?” he asked.

Misaki grinned, then grabbed his arm. “I’ll show you.” As she dragged him off the platform and across the arcade, he caught the mercenary glimmer in her eye and swallowed hard.

The rest of the group gathered around as Misaki explained the game to Hei. It sounded simple enough; he put in some tokens and the magnetic surface of the table powered up.

Ever since he’d gotten his contractor ability, magnetic fields made his skin crawl. Something to do with the way electric currents interacted with them, but he didn’t really understand the physics of it.

Shivering briefly, he took one of the mallets and slid the other over to Misaki, who caught it deftly.

“I have the puck,” she said. She placed the flat yellow disc on the horizontal line that marked the center of the table, then crouched low over her goal in a ready stance. Hei mimicked her as best he could; the puck started drifting to one side, and he kept his attention split between her and it.

Which turned out to be a mistake.

Misaki lunged forward when his attention wavered, shooting her arm out and connecting her mallet with the puck. The disc shot straight into Hei’s goal before he even had a chance to react.

“Ha!” Misaki exclaimed, pumping her hand in the air. “First point to me!”

She grinned while he blinked dumbly at the table. He’d let go of his mallet, and it was currently drifting aimlessly away. He pulled it back absently.

He fetched the puck from the return slot in front of his knees and started to place it in the center of the table, but Misaki said, “No, you get to serve, since you lost the point.”

He could tell that she was trying to keep the smugness out of her voice; but if there was one thing he’d learned about Misaki, it was that she was just as bad a winner as she was a loser. So, it was _that_ kind of game, was it?

Hei twirled the puck in front of him for a moment, getting used to the way it moved on the magnetic surface. Then he let it float forward a few inches, and tapped it lightly with the mallet. The puck glided smoothly - and slowly - towards the side fender, where it ricocheted gracefully and headed towards Misaki’s goal.

Misaki’s mouth twitched as she waited impatiently for the puck to come within range; then she snapped her elbow and with a loud crack sent the puck zooming back towards him.

This time, Hei was ready. He hit the puck at a sharp angle and it glanced off the side wall only to zip at high speed into the opposite wall, careening back and forth but with hardly any forward progress. Misaki watched the puck with hawk eyes, her hand tensed around her mallet. As soon as the disc crossed the center line into her territory she lunged, shooting it straight towards him.

But Hei had already lunged forward as well. He intercepted the puck before it was even halfway to his goal and shot it beneath Misaki’s still outstretched arm, off the side wall, and right into her goal. Her mouth dropped open as it slotted in and rolled into the puck return.

There was a collected _ooh_ from the bystanders; the little digital display in the center now read _1:1_. Hei raised one eyebrow, schooling his expression into one of mild interest.

Misaki eyed him suspiciously. Doubt flashed across her face - but only for the briefest moment. Then she fetched the puck and served it again.

Hei trapped it in the corner, killing the momentum, and tapped it gently back towards her. Misaki shot him a glare as she drummed her fingers on the table in obvious irritation while she waited for the puck to reach her. She slid the mallet for a banking shot - when the puck abruptly jolted in its easy glide as if it had hit some sort of resistance.

Instead of hitting it dead-on, she only grazed an edge, sending it bouncing sloppily back to Hei’s end of the table. He returned it with a loud crack. Misaki tried to recover, but she hadn’t expected the speed of the volley; her lunge was off balance and she nearly face-planted onto the table. The puck slid cleanly into her unprotected goal.

Her eyes flashed in sudden understanding; he was going to pay for that little cheat later, Hei knew - but it always caught her by surprise when he played dirty, and he loved catching her by surprise.

Misaki slapped the puck down on the table and immediately served it at breakneck speed.

This time Hei didn’t have a chance to strategize. He reacted on instinct, defending his goal and sending the disc hurtling back towards her. Misaki rebounded it, and thus began a series of rapid-fire volleys that consumed Hei’s whole attention. The din and bright lights of the arcade, the cheering spectators, all faded from his awareness until there was nothing left but the yellow spin of the puck, the _clack clack clack_ as it zoomed back and forth, and Misaki’s intense stare. Now and again the puck would slip past a defensive block and into a goal, only to be whipped right back out and served again.

At last, Hei got a lucky shot into Misaki’s goal, bringing the game to a tie at _6-6_.

“Game point,” Misaki said, not taking her eyes off of Hei’s as she flipped the disc back onto the table.

Her serve had all the power of her entire arm in it, and Hei missed the puck completely. Fortunately it missed the goal as well, and zigzagged back towards Misaki, who pelted it right back again. The speed was too fast to try and return, so Hei took up a defensive position, guarding his goal and zipping it across the field whenever it came close enough to hit.

Misaki returned each volley furiously, until even she couldn’t catch up to the spinning puck. It careened across the table all on its own, glancing off walls and mallets at breakneck speed.

Finally Hei managed to jam it into a corner, killing its momentum; it rebounded with a lazy twist, slowly gliding at a broad angle towards the center line.

Hei stared at Misaki’s death grip on her mallet, watching for the slightest movement. He could tell without seeing that she was doing the same with him.

The puck lost its spin. It had just reached the middle of the table was moving purely by the low-grade magnetic force, all momentum lost.

Hei waited, evening his breath.

A muscle in Misaki’s thumb flexed.

Hei lunged for the puck - so did Misaki. Their mallets connected with it on opposite sides at exactly the same time. But the force of Hei’s attack was just slightly stronger than Misaki’s, and it was enough to flip the puck against her mallet, off the table, and into the air, where it connected squarely with Kouno’s forehead.

“What - _ow!_ ” he exclaimed, staggering back.

Hei’s first instinct was to apologize - but Misaki burst out laughing before he could say anything.

“Oh god, Kouno - are you okay?” she asked after she’d paused for breath.

There was a dazed look on his face. “Yeah,” he muttered, rubbing a red spot on his head. “It’s my own fault for standing between the two of you.”

The others were laughing too, so Hei hazarded a smile. Saitou stopped down and picked up the puck from the floor, then handed it to Hei, who offered it in turn to Misaki.

“Why don’t we just call it a draw?” she said, her face pleasantly flushed with exertion.

He nodded; but the game wasn’t going to turn off until the final point had been scored, and there was a pair of college students waiting to play. So Hei stepped up to the table and dropped the puck into his own goal.

Misaki opened her mouth, perhaps to argue against him giving her the point, but then closed it again and shook her head. “Well, what next?”

“Food?” Hei suggested.

She smiled. “You read my mind.”


End file.
